NTV Plus picks Grass Valley for 2014 Winter Games

Grass Valley has revealed it will provide Russian satellite broadcaster NTV Plus with several of its innovative live production solutions to deliver multichannel sports production for the 2014 Winter Games to be held in Sochi, Russia, February 7-23, 2014.

These solutions include a K2 Summit production client with a K2 Storage Area Network (SAN), GV STRATUS nonlinear media production tools with EDIUS editing capabilities, and a K2 Dyno S Replay Controller. The Grass Valley-NTV Plus collaboration was completed via Grass Valley’s long term Russian partner OKNO TV, alongside System Integrator PTS to deliver smooth installation of the Grass Valley solutions.

NTV Plus selected Grass Valley solutions to serve as the hub for its integrated production, post, and as its distribution system. Not only does the system’s flexibility enable it to be reconfigurable after the Games, it can also integrate with NTV Plus’s existing Grass Valley solutions, making it the most cost-effective and resource-friendly choice by reducing costs and boosting creativity. The semi-portable platform is due to be installed in January 2014 in Sochi.

“We worked closely with Grass Valley last summer covering a number of London’s major sporting events,” said Oleg Kolesnikov, Chief Technology Officer, NTV Plus. “Drawing upon this positive experience we reached the natural conclusion to continue our relationship with Grass Valley as we move towards Sochi. With less than six months to go, we needed to act quickly, and Grass Valley was able to meet our immediate need for a fast, flexible, and reliable system that integrates smoothly with our existing production gear. Once again, Grass Valley has exceeded our expectations and delivered a system on time and on budget—allowing us to concentrate on our own preparations as excitement continues to build in Russia.”

The K2 media server and storage platform includes the only media client that supports end-to-end SD/HD workflows in DVCPRO, MPEG-2, AVC-Intra, H.264/AVCHD, and DNxHD formats. Teamed with the K2 Dyno S Replay Controller and integrated with GV STRATUS, it offers an ideal solution for live events. K2 Summit can be configured as part of a SAN solution comprised of multiple K2 Summit clients, K2 media servers, and K2 RAID storage. GV STRATUS is an easy-to-use and custom built suite, with a wide range of software-centric tools for a robust nonlinear production workflow, offering support for ingest, editing, content aggregation, logging, transfer, and playout. It combines with EDIUS nonlinear video editing software to offer powerful, real-time editing functionality.

“It’s great to be partnering with NTV Plus again” said Said Bacho, Senior Vice President of EMEA, Grass Valley. “It’s important to us that we work flexibly with NTV Plus’s existing system—to support them in the expansion of their capabilities and to maintain their first-rate reputation as a technologically superior organization in the Russian broadcast market. Our solutions unify workflow and configurations that can be used in an infinite number of combinations across the entire production ecosystem. We are thrilled to be able to swiftly meet NTV Plus’s production needs for the Winter Games and to also help them plan for the future.”